Just as another perspective on this, Dewalt has been owned by B&D for years and they make nice tools. Recently I have been buying the Dewalt portabands instead of the Milwaukee line; originally for price reasons but after my guys started using them they all prefer the Dewalt over the Milwaukee, and they are $80 less per unit and an even bigger cut if I buy at least 10 units.
As for cordless drills, I buy the cheapest refurb junk I can find, Skill has a nice cordless unit with (2) 18V batteries and it works great as a screw gun. I generally pick these up for about $70 a unit if I buy (20) or more, and they far outlast Dewalt, Bosch, Makita, and Milwaukee, but there is a catch. They reason they outlast the nicer cordless units is they don’t get stolen; if I buy anything nice it wont make 6 months and it is gone, but the Skill cordless units last about 12-15 months before I have to replace them.
The other problem I have is when a really good cordless unit is purchased (Bosch), the tool has so much power that my electricians get lazy and try to use it in lieu of a hole hog, when they really should be using a hole hog, and burn it up. To date I have not had one Skill burn up because they don’t even try to use it for that.
At home I use Makita, because my daughter thinks “the blue ones are pretty”, and I think they work great.
